Earlier today Sony announced it had acquired Returnal developer Housemarque with a fairly standard press release on Business Wire and an equally unassuming post on the PlayStation Blog that were funneled like thick buttercream through the social media piping bag.
Although the news itself was fairly weighty, everything about the announcement was seemingly by the book — except, that wasn’t the case everywhere.
Over on the official PlayStation Japan Twitter account, somebody pushed out the announcement with an image that indicated Sony was welcoming Demon’s Souls developer Bluepoint Games into the PlayStation Studios fold — not as folks in other regions were being told, Housemarque.
Curiously, aside from the names on the image (pasted below) being completely different, the picture uploaded by PlayStation Japan also incorporated a Demon’s Souls knight alongside the protagonist of Housemarque’s Returnal. The official Housemarque announcement that went out later features a similar backdrop, but notably without the knight.
The seemingly premature announcement was documented by prolific video game tweeter Nibel, who managed to verify the original (and now-deleted) PlayStation Japan tweet using Tweetdeck.
We’ve reached out to Sony for comment on the matter and will update this article as soon as we hear back.
